He says it that first time, your first time, when you do it, it, the thing. At his friend’s house, someone’s sister’s room. You don’t want to go, but that’s the day he talks to you—talks to you—in class, whispers You are hot.Those words, ones you’ve never heard, are what get you into the house because you think it will be this, this will be just a kiss. You don’t know this will happen. How he’ll get you on this bed, rip tear split beat you red and when he’s done he’ll say Damn, you smell like fish.
Fish he tells his friends. Trout he says and they say Shit, man, you’ll do anything on a bet.
When you walk down the halls they cast imaginary lines and laugh, those boys and him, the one you loved for noticing you, the boy with eyes like oceans you could drink. But the others, they know what happened, everyone does.
In the locker room, they ignore you and no one sees the dark marks. In health class you talk about things, about syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia, words like the names of a sea king’s whores. They look at you, the girls and the boys, and they laugh and they say Smells fishy!
At home, when your mother asks, Why are you wearing those long shirts and skirts, it’s so hot? you say nothing. So she doesn’t know and you won’t tell her, though she’s the one who says to you Beauty is on the inside and this you trust because your outside is not beautiful. Still, you say nothing; won’t tell her how you go to the beach in the morning, how there’s no one there but you and the water and the bruised clouds hovering. How the brackish air stings your lips. How, when the tide comes in, you lie on your belly to face it, let it hiss in and out of your mouth. How the shape of fingers and fists mottle your arms and thighs in blue-green thunderclouds of violence.
At school, the girls spray perfume. Stinks like tuna! They laugh and you smile because they are right.
Your mother bangs on the bathroom door. Honey, what’s going on? You lie there, your head submerged so her cries are a muffled tragedy on another world. When you come out she says Why won’t you talk to me? but you can’t speak because your mouth is full of water.
When he comes for you again, him and his friends outside school, they hold you down and you don’t say a word as they laugh pant sweat and take you in turns. So you stop breathing, shut your eyes, ears, mouth and feel the many edges of your teeth.
This time the darkness spreads. It’s on your neck, your wrists, down to the knees, on your sides, inside your arms. But then you see the boys at school, especially him, and you bite your tongue until it bleeds, tasting like ocean, salt-iron blood-sting. So you go home and take a bath so the tears run underwater where it doesn’t matter.
They won’t look at you anymore, he won’t, nor the girls, nor the teachers. Their voices around you sound underwater, passive, muted. You sip saltwater all day, draw bubbles on your desk and think of the tide breathing in and out, swallowing the shore, and biting its way closer.
When you come home, your mother says, We need to talk and you show her your legs. You show your arms, your wrists your neck. She runs to the phone. You slip outside where your skin thickens. At the shore, the sea glares inky and disturbed, but it smells the same, like rage, so you walk on the rocks to the angry waves. The rip tide. The words themselves two furious syllables pulling and thrashing as they did with the swimmers who died here and that’s when you know what to do.
Back on the beach, naked now, air crisp on your skin you do not shiver because the boys are here. They come at night for bonfire pot beer party and tonight it’s just boys, just friends, all the friends who had gone fishing. So you enter the glow of their fire and they hush laugh hush, frozen with the buzz-rush of beer and pot and shock. Until he stands and leaps and runs but you run faster your body a muscle your heart a great white fist. And when the water hits, you plunge, and the boys come after, coming faster, laughing like cannibals until the tide rips and their lungs fill with salt and you dive deeper, open your eyes arms mouth and breathe.
Sharon McGill writes and draws at sharonmcgill.net.
